Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 9 – In the 1990s, Islamic
missionaries from the Middle East and South Asia were the primary source of the
spread of radicalism in the Muslim community of the Russian Federation, but
now, a Moscow prosecutor says, the role of Muslims from Russia who study abroad
and then return is much more important.
Viktor Grin, Russia’s procurator general,
made that and other statements in the course of a speech this week to a joint
meeting of legislators from the Federal Assembly and the Federation Council for
Inter-Ethnic Relations and Interaction with Religious Organizations (interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=56698).
One reason that as many as “several
thousand Russian citizens” according to Interior Ministry and FSB data have
studied or are now studying in Islamic universities and medrassahs abroad is
that the corresponding institutions inside Russia can’t compete. They don’t
have the resources either from private contributions or from state support.
“Analysis shows that these
individuals not infrequently become not only active ideologues of religious extremism
but also bring their radical teachings” back to Russia even though their ideas “are
not characteristic for our country.” This has become, he said, “an additional
factor generating inter-ethnic tension.”
Grin said that this trend makes it imperative to consider how to
improve domestic Islamic education and how to regulate the flow of students
abroad and the movement of migrants from southern parts of Russia and
neighboring countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus into central Russian
cities where they spark tensions with the indigenous population.
Grin’s remarks suggest that Moscow
may be considering imposing severe restrictions on Muslims who want to study in
Islamic educational institutions abroad much as Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
several other Muslim-majority post-Soviet states have done. But it is not clear whether at least in the
short term that will work any better in Russia than it has elsewhere.
The numbers of Muslims who have
received training abroad is now sufficiently large, far more than Grin
acknowledged this week, that such people are likely to continue to play a major
role in many parishes -- especially those in major cities where the Russian
authorities continue to refuse to allow new mosques to open and thus drive them
underground.
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